contributed by Alana Villanueva [interior designer / dallasDECORUM blogger / design junkie]

EDITOR’S NOTE: One our goals is to paint an accurate picture of the interior design industry. The majority of the time it possesses the steady energy and controlled chaos of a Jackson Pollock; occasionally, it rises above, imbuing the beauty, grace and precision of a Botticelli; and, sometimes, its oft-required banality is as disappointing and dissatisfying as dogs playing poker on a black velvet canvas. The point being that the real life of an interior designer has very little semblance to those portrayed in the media. The splendor of this industry lies in its diversity and complexity of detail – not only from job-to-job and project-to-project, but also day-to-day and hour-to-hour. For this reason, we’re sharing one day in the working life of first-time contributor and interior designer Alana Villaneuva, who reveals the good, the bad and the unpredictable.

In The Beginning…

My career as an interior designer started at the age of six – and a naïve age of six, at that. My mother did do some decorating around the house, but mostly everything evolved into half-finished projects. So, when she was gone, I would re-accessorize and rearrange the furniture, moving things from one room to another to use them in different ways.

Most of the time this was of great delight to her, but occasionally it was not. Like when I would transform the dining room, which had slowly turned into a home office stacked with paperwork the entire length of the dining table. My initial approach was simple. I would start by finding a large box and placing it at one end of the dining table. Extending my arm out in a straight horizontal line perpendicular to my body, I would rest it on the table and simply walk down one side, sending half of the organized chaos fluttering into in the box. On the opposite side, I would rinse and repeat, following the entire purging process with Pledge and a dust cloth, of course. After all, cleanliness is next to Godliness, right”

After this cleansing ritual, it was time for the fun stuff like thick, starched tablecloths, and delicate, colorful runners and placemats. Then on to my grandmother’s china with its small floral detail accenting the edge that rarely saw the light of day due to its bone thin density. The flatware was a little ostentatious with its gold-plated, stamped stems, but that didn’t matter. (In order to know where to place the three forks, I would fast forward in my mind to the scene in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts is shown the proper placement of the tableware.)

When I was finished, I was ready for the Queen of England to stop by our modest home for tea. In her place, however, came my mother. I would even go through the whole routine of bringing “my client” in after my installation with her eyes closed in anticipation of The Big Reveal. To my dismay, she did not jump up and down and cry and say that she couldn’t believe her eyes. Rather, I almost always ended up grounded. Worst of all, I had to dismantle my meticulous work, putting every precious item back in its place. The stacks of unattractive paperwork would arrive shortly thereafter as if I was never there.

I continued along like this through middle school, spending most of my time in the library, where there were always plentiful stacks of Architectural Digest and Archaeology magazines but very little else. In a small town in the dusty plains of west Kansas, the best chance I had of seeing a “real interior designer" was calling one of my friend’s moms who sold decorating paraphernalia out of a catalog (think little painted signs that spell “Welcome” and “Country Kitchen”). She would come over to our house and host a party while also pushing Mary Kay cosmetics. It was truly a one-stop-shopping experience.

Everywhere I went I would visually redesign a space. Old buildings were my favorite places to go, with all of their original architectural detailing and the grandness of their rooms. The more dilapidated and ignored, the better because my imagination could run completely wild, going so far as to picture what type of family would live there. They usually had three kids – two boys and a girl – and traveled 5-7 months of the year. Since they would bring back artifacts from around the world, I mentally designed the interiors in neutral tones so that the emphasis would be on the ethnic art and exotic artifacts. The children did not attend traditional school because they students of the world, speaking five different languages, never impatiently uttering "Are we there yet”"

Even a visit to a new friend’s house to watch a movie became a design project in my mind. Instead of watching whatever coming of age movie was popular at the time, I would gaze around the room, opening up the space by removing a wall, selecting paint colors, and rearranging the seating to allow for better conversation areas. Then, of course, I’d imagine re-hanging the artwork to eye-level (one of my biggest pet peeves). I actually would try to casually mention to my friend’s parents that their artwork and family photos where displayed all wrong, but they never caught on. At 12-years-old, I was met with blank, funny looks with heads that would slightly cock to the side like little puppies, silently expressing "Huh”"

Obsessed Or Blessed”

The point of my mini, much-edited autobiography is this: I know that this is what I was born to do in some way, shape, or form. Since the moment that I started playing with Legos, I’ve been lucky enough to know 110% what I was supposed to do with my life. Some of you may have been blessed – or cursed” – with this obsession too. I interject the word “cursed” because this drive can easily take over your life simply because work doesn’t feel like work. All of the trials and tribulations of being a designer don’t feel like trials and tribulations to me. No matter what comes along, I just chock it up to another learning experience.

Nevertheless, if you are not one of the design-driven, then the reality of the business might be a little tougher for you to swallow. There are many parts of the profession that can be perceived as difficult, repetitive, uncomfortable, and tedious. It is a business, after all, involving satisfying client demands, working within restrictions and parameters, meeting challenging deadlines, and continually solving problems come what may.

All this to say, if you are one of those aspiring interior designers who think that you are going to get paid to “shop” all day for “pretty things,” now hear this…

5:30AM
Wake up, drink coffee, read emails and blogs. I have to get my morning fix of caffeine and design. Yes, I am obsessed, but we’ve come to that conclusion already, and I don’t like hearing about the latest design news from people at work.

7:30AM
After the mad rush of getting myself and my daughter ready and off to school, I get on the freeway and make my 30-45 minute commute from home to the office in the Dallas Design District. I am a creature of habit, so there is one call to my husband in the morning and then the rest is music. I hate talk radio in the morning. It’s distracting, and I have already gotten any pertinent information from Matt and Meredith. I like to make a mental list of everything I have to do when I get into the office or to the job site. I get into almost a meditative state where I picture how everything is going to go, which is perfect. Hahaha – perfect….funny.

8:30AM
This morning I have two meetings before I go into the office. The first stop is a client that I have worked with since I have been at Dallas Design Group, which is almost three years now. We did all of the construction on her home from the ground up, and then we moved on to furniture, which she needed an entire house of since she moved from a very modern home to a continental, French style home.

This is basically the tail end of it. We’re just finalizing the children’s playroom. I show her the fabrics, floor plans, and furnishings that I have pulled together, which is an easy start to the morning to me. We also hit on some other odds and ends that she needs throughout the house such as a few additional things for the daughter’s room. Then on to the time consuming stuff that you can’t really charge for…arranging for some repair work to a drapery treatment that was installed months ago…a bit of repair work to some of the furniture.

All of this repair work means a call from the office later to the fabricators, trying to get them to come out to the house and fix the self-welt that is frayed on the lounge chair (for free or a nominal fee). "It’s been a year!" they say (because that’s when they made it, but not when it was installed). "Yes, I understand that, but this was a $5,000 chair,” I say. “I know you must be crazy swamped with the holidays so it’s hard for you to find some time. But is there anything that I can do – send you a photo, perhaps” Oh, by the way I am getting ready to send over a bunch of pieces for you to quote out for new job when you can get some time," I be sure to mention.

LESSON 1: If more work is coming in, then your vendors will more than likely fit you in somewhere (for free or for that nominal fee). But only say that if this is true, of course! It’s due to situations like that that I like to use the same fabricators, the same contractors, and the same delivery people when I can.

LESSON 2: A designer is only as good as her little black book. Loyalty to these people can save you money, time and headaches in the future.

Usually you have an assistant follow up with this kind of stuff. I don’t. I am in that weird transition period of where I am technically a Senior Designer (SD) but do not have enough clients to support my own team. Besides taking care of my own clients, I put most of time into working with another SD.

We have also hired a new person for our team who, one day soon, will take my spot completely. (Come on economy!) She has come from another highly reputable firm, so she knows the drill, and she just needs to learn it our firm’s way. I’m basically showing her how to anticipate what the next step is, because being an assistant is two things my opinion – anticipation and initiative. You can solve – or, should I say, prevent” – most problems with those two things.

More To Come
It’s not yet mid-morning, and Alana’s day is just getting started. Tune in next month when she and a contractor sift through boxes of light fixtures on a job site in the freezing cold and in high heels (Alana, not the contractor), tries to solve a stone installation mystery with sparse cell phone coverage, and dines on a glamorous lunch consisting of a candy bar and a diet soda – all for the love of interior design. GO HERE to read Part 2.